Joel was not only a perfect father to his children, he was a beloved figure to all the children in his orbit, including my own son Lee Hoagland. At the Washington International School and at soccer games 'Mr. Havemann' was a welcoming and welcome parent - remembering everyone's name, cheering on players, not missing a thing. And the warmth we felt in his presence...... 

Not only was Joel a wonderful friend, but I think I'm just about the only person around who can call Joel his double-editor.  First, Joel edited my stories at the LA Times for many years, always with the quiet grace of William Shawn. As others have said, his talent was to be able to fix a single small word or phrase in ways that made your story clearer and better.

Then, not long after I left the Times in 2001 to write books, I was shocked to find that book editors don't really edit their manuscripts in the way that newspaper editors do. So I asked Joel to be my book editor. He was even better than at newspapers. An old cliche that reporters share with one another about writing books is that writing for newspapers is like playing within the limits of the 40-yardlines; to write books, you have to learn how to learn how to do a lot of open-field running. As  I did that, letting my writing become more discursive, let 's just say that Joel ,as my editor, made a lot of game-saving downfield tackles.  

   My favorite single visual image of Joel comes from that post-newspaper era. One Friday in the spring of 2009, our daughter Elizabeth called us from New York to tell us she was getting engaged. As it happened, we were having dinner at Joel and Judys house the next night, so we bought a bottle of champagne to bring to their house to celebrate. It was to be a surprise.

But it wasn't. As circumstance would have it, that spring Will was working in New York City in the same Board of Education office as our new son-in--law -to-be, Micah.  That very week, Micah had passed by Will's desk and noticed a copy of my book on it -- and asked why he had that book there. "My father edited the book," Will said. Well, said Micah, I'm about to ask the author of the book's daughter to marry me.  Thus, Will knew about the upcoming engagement before we did -- and he told his dad.

   When we showed up on Joel's doorstep that Saturday, champagne in hand, Joel opened the door. His face was priceless: It was smiling, impish, wise, knowing, happy, and also reveling in his ability to one-up us.  In a word, triumphant. "I know what that bottle's for!" he said.

I met Joel in the late 1960s when I went to work for the Chicago Sun-Times. He had the education beat then, and I, like most women in the news business, sat several rows behind him in the women's section, commonly referred to by the men up front (Joel excluded) as "birdland."
Judy, my close friend from college, joined us the following year after I introduced her to an editor, and Joel always credited me with bringing them together. She sat behind him in the grimy smoke-filled newsroom and stole his copy paper when she ran out. Or was it the other way around? I like to think these two remarkable people would have found each other anyway. Surely, they were meant to be, but Joel always introduced me as the person who made it possible. Even the last time I saw him, when he could no longer talk, he squeezed my hand and chuckled softly as I reminded him of our beginnings.
One of my favorite stories about our early days was the time we went skiing in Northern Michigan. We left Chicago in a snowstorm on a Friday night and pulled over somewhere near the Indiana line when it got too hard to see the road ahead. Joel and my husband got out of the car and Judy, little Tara and I watched helplessly as a vehicle lost control and slid as if in slow motion into our Ford sedan. It was terrifying, but we were okay, the car was still drivable and we were young and foolish enough that we headed north for a weekend of skiing.  I still have a vivid memory of Joel's wide grin as he careened downhill in nothing more than an unlined khaki jacket over a cotton shirt. I don't even remember a hat; maybe he wore earmuffs. As thin as he was he never seemed to get cold.